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140 Kostas P. Kyrris 8

11.    Though the end of the story is the liberation of the girl from her magically caused erotic passion, the passion itself is extolled in a frank way not to be expected from pious hagiography. The demons of sex disappeared like butchered swine as in the Gospel when the homeopathic sorcery invol-ving them was dispelled by the priest of St. Anastasia after the anointment with oil, a widespread healing practice among monks (ibid., pp. 62—63; add. HMonAeg, pp. 12—15, 128; Laurent, La Vie merveillense . .i as in pa. 4, p. 199; idem, La Vita Retractała ..., pp. 51—53, 137 — 141, 149—151, 157 — 171 passim; etc.). Again the model is in the New Testament, Cath, Jac., 5, 14, and the incubatio method of healing in what in fact was a mental asylum was also applied in the same place to St. Andrew the Fool and to St. Niphon (L. Ryden in Greek and Latin ... as in par. 7, pp. 38 — 39.). As for the second love story in Irene's Life (pp. 67 — 75), it deals with Nicholas the vine-dres-ser of the nunnery, "a young man with unruly instincts ... a victim of abo-minable desire ... doing his utmost to ... sleep with the nun he coveted”. The devil "madę him believe tliat ... he entered the celi of the beloved girl, lay down on her bed, embraced her and did what he desired. While in his imagination he achieved this, he was hurled on the earth rolling and foaming at the mouth and suffered all the anguish of the demoniacs. The neighbours were alarmed by his screams and gathered at this sight”. Irene sent him to the same church of the Great Martyr Anastasia, where "he was kept to await his cure, bound with chains and in fetters by those attending on such peoplc”. In a dream Anastasia told her tliat, "he shall not obtain the cure save through you”. So Irene "had him brought, bound in his fetters” and had him tied to a column of the convent church. Then she began daily prayers for him toge-ther with the sisters, "to conceal the fact that she had healed him”. During a holy service he broke his chains, but he was tamed by the abbess, whom, “however, he insulted with "frivolous names”; "night-eater, wooden leg, insa-tiable stander, iron hearted, subdurer of stones” — a comic notę recalling that occurring in the Life of St. Symeon Salos (G. da Costa Louillet, Byzan-tion, XXIV, 2, 1954, p. 214). Then he explained how he was occupied by a demon sent by the "Prince (of the demons)”, the etemal cause of evils such as "the sweet incitement of lust, ... heresies, schisms ...”. Eventually he was healed by her with admonitions and by "making the sign of the cross on his forehead” and asking him to say to all that he was healed by "God, throug the intercession of the archistrateges Michael and Gabriel”: the Saint was always modest.

12.    The most erotic piece of hagiography is the Encomion of Euphe-mia of Chalcedon by Theodore Bcstos composed in a rhetorical style several years after 815. After telling her story up to her martyrical death, Theodore celebrates her as the wife of the Song of Songs of the Old Testament. In fact a large part of ch. 9 of the Encomion is a paraphrase or imitation of the Song and has much of its erotic verve when it describes the martyr's beautiful body. Even the very first words of the Prologue are taken from the Song (3, 6; 6, 9). Although in some clauses Theodore gives a religious tum to his lyricism, what remains as its substance and impresses the reader is the erotic element (F. Halkin, Euphemie, pp. 107 — 139, esp. 110, 126 — 128; for the datę: I. Sev<5enko, 'Hagiography of the Iconoclastic Period', Iconoclasm, ed. by A. Bryer and J. Herrin, 1977, pp. 124 — 125 n. 87). A similar approach, however, occurs in the Panegyric for Mary the Egyptian by Euthymios Proto-